Christmas is just around the corner and it’s a strategically important time of year for churches looking to grow. How should you focus your communications efforts leading up to the big day at your church? Here’s a core truth for growing churches when it comes to special days like this: The majority of guests who attend your Christmas services come because someone invites them; therefore, the majority of your efforts need to encourage people to invite their friends.

Your church has an important mission and a big vision. And there are a lot of people in your community to reach with the Gospel. But money is pretty tight and you don’t have a substantial budget. Does this mean you can’t reach people or lead a growing church? Are you supposed to just wait until giving picks up to implement changes? I don’t believe a small budget means small impact.

In my time in leadership at Connexus Church, we’ve had many difficult conversations. And they’ve resulted in our church growing from a handful of churched people to over 1000 people each weekend, 60% of whom had no previous church background—all in a region where 96% of the population don’t attend church.

Great church leaders are like sailors who are reading the breezes and adjusting the sails to catch the winds of change. While we worry about the latest social media trend or where music in the church is headed or if it’s possible to train robots to do pastoral care, we also need to invest in what we know will remain true and build our ministries, systems and approaches around that. Here are some areas where our churches can have impact for a long time to come!

In the early years of Disneyland, Walt Disney would often pop up on random attractions. He wanted to ensure the Disney “magic” was present. While he knew he had great elements to rides like The Jungle Cruise, his role was making sure those... read more